Cross-Cultural Comparison of Emotions in Organizations:

Service Personnel’s Job Performance and Job Satisfaction

Abstract

In the world economy, the proportion of the service sector is gradually increasing, and the population of workers in the service sector is also increasing accordingly. In organizational studies, there are issues peculiar to the organization and the personnel that provides the services. In this study, the author examined how service personnel’s positive and negative emotions influence job performance and job satisfaction. The author surveyed flight attendants working for Asian airlines (Study 1) and European airlines (Study 2) and compared service personnel’s emotions because of cross-cultural differences. “Affective delivery,” which incorporates positive emotional expressions in service, was used as a positive emotional variable of service personnel in this study. Conversely, “emotional exhaustion” caused by physical and mental fatigue was considered a negative emotional aspect and a negative emotional variable. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis first measured the variables used in this study, and then the direct and mediator effects between the variables were verified by path analysis by covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM). This study shows that service personnel who practice positive emotional expression in response to customer service improve job performance, even if they perceive role ambiguity in different organizational cultures. In contrast, perceiving role ambiguity generally makes service personnel feel stressed and emotionally exhausted, and job performance declines for European airlines. Understanding and utilizing such mechanisms may help prevent service personnel from feeling stressed and emotional fatigue in the workplace.